Friday, November 20, 2009

Concerning CRU emails #3

There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords.

Nice to see Artie MacStrawman popping his head above the parapet there...

The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined.

Well, we don't really imagine this "monolith" do we? This "monolith" idea is one that has been pushed—and pushed hard—by the scientific establishment, as well as the politicians and the media. There is, we are constantly told, no disagrement amongst real scientists: there is consensus.

What these emails do show is that there is not consensus amongst scientists and that, privately, they think that certain papers are crap. No word of this gets to the media, or to the people being soaked for ever more cash to pay for these delusions.

What these emails really show is why such information never gets to the public: it is because climate scientists—like doctors—close ranks when attacked.

Not only this, but these emails also clearly show that climate scientists have been doing their absolute best to ensure that those who would question their findings cannot find the data. The following email—written by Phil Jones—is from an exchange with Michael Mann. [Email addresses redacted.]

The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? - our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it.

We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it - thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who'll say we must adhere to it !

Again, we suspected—from the blocking of the frequent FoI requests—that this attitude prevailed, but these are simply a confirmation that these "scientists" were actively looking for ways to avoid having to release their datasets.

So, no: there is no explicit confirmation of a concerted conspiracy to deceive the world. But there is explicit confirmation of scientists talking about the best way of data, blocking of FoI requests and admissions of failure in certain papers.

And that is just in the few conversations that I have perused so far. More to come...